Chapter Text
Anasui liked having the radio off in his car. He’d gotten a lot of criticism from some people (No Ermés, his desire to drive in silence was not connected to his diagnoses, bitch–) from when he’d removed the radio dials, but no one else complained. Still though, although it was more pleasant to drive in when they were alone, now that there was another person in the car, it was a little more disconcerting. Especially when he gave a shit about the other person.
“So. How was school?”
Emporio shifted in the passenger seat as they stopped at a red light.
“Um. It was. Fine.”
“Yeah right. What happened?” Anasui took their eyes off the light to stare at Emporio, who had been looking peaked and puffy-eyed since he’d left the pickup line.
“Light’s green.”
Anasui faced the road again, turning right out of the left turn lane. There was a sigh of exasperation from Emporio, but they were the only car at the intersection so it wasn’t like anyone was in danger.
“...It’s stupid but…We were talking about the Earth’s gravitational pull in science class today— ”
He felt himself frowning. Not at Emporio, but a general frustration that even months after, they were all still affected by the events leading up to the Cape Canaveral Incident™. Luckily, Emporio was one of the two people they could probably stand to help this.
“Well that sounds fucking familiar,” Okay so maybe not a great start, but luckily Emporio laughed so maybe he wasn’t totally failing. It was probably okay to keep going.
“So, after that?”
“Um. Hadapanicattackinthebathroom.”
“And now we’re here.”
“Yeah.”
Anasui’s frown deepened as they turned again, getting them closer to his impromptu destination. He was terrible at comforting people, god forbid traumatized preteens— But this traumatized preteen he’d co-parented for almost five years, so he had a pretty good strategy. They turned into the drive-through of a boba tea shop.
“Let’s go to the cemetery after this, yeah?” Usually when the convicted perpetrator of a double-homocide suggests going to the cemetery, people freak out. Not Emporio. His face split into a genuine smile, some of the puffiness from earlier already starting to dissipate.
All things considered, the cemetery was not a bad place to kill an afternoon. It was practically deserted anyway, with just a couple of bikers in the far distance. Boba teas in hand, Anasui and Emporio took a path to a familiar set of headstones.
There were three close by each other, but only one of them had any real remains buried in it.
Celia Alniño
“Hi Mom! So um. Today was mostly good, but there was something that happened later–”
Anasui stepped just out of earshot of Emporio’s hushed, but happy ramblings to his mom, and took a seat on a nearby bench. Talking to his mom’s bones had been a habit he’d established before Anasui’s time, but it was a surprisingly good outlet for the kid.
What did kind of irk them was the fact that their own gravestone was so drab. When the Speedwagon foundation had told him that his reward for helping the woman who’d saved the world was being listed as an "official casualty” and getting a new identity, he’d requested a pink granite tombstone with a Mickey Mouse engraving, just to see if they’d do it.
They did not. In fact, Dr. Kujo had personally glared him down from the doorway as a Speedwagon foundation lawyer had informed him that ending up in a posthumous lawsuit against one of the biggest media corporations in the world might compromise his new identity. And then the fuckers gave them a slate tombstone. Slate, the nerve. Weather had gotten a blue granite tombstone and failed to see why it irked him so much. (“It’s not like you're actually using it. We’ll get you another later.”) He sipped on his fruit tea, contemplating.
Emporio was now twiddling with some flowers that Anasui hadn’t seen him summon. The first time they’d visited, Emporio had brought a huge bouquet of flowers with him, and Weather had set them on fire with a lightning strike. And just like that, infinite flower glitch.
Their internal reminiscing faded out as saw another two people looking around the graveyard. They were too far away to make out any other details other than mostly-black outfits that were ill-advised for the floridian temperatures of Fort Lauderdale. He and Emporio were dressed much more sensibly. Emporio in shorts, his cubs cap, and white T-shirt, and himself in an almost-shear brown maxi skirt, and a black long-sleeve shirt he’d taken a pair of scissors too.
He almost dismissed the onlookers in his mind, but they were absolutely getting closer, tossing glances at certain gravestones and then looking away, searching for one in particular. He kept his eyes near Emporio, but watched them get closer in his periphery. It looked like–No. That girl was way too young to be his mother, even if she did have a similar shade of pink hair. And he had no idea who the woman with two long, green braids could be.
Still, he felt a strong pulse of rage under his skin, and tried to quell it. He was not going to freak out in front of the kid. Frowning, he reached into the pockets of his skirt, his hand brushing his phone, but grabbing onto a ballpoint pen. The last time he’d disassembled his phone he’d missed a call from Weather, so it was safer (if less interesting) to screw apart the pen.
Pen nib, grib, ink chamber, spring, barrel. The cap and clip were always harder to get off but not very much so. The dismemberment and reassembly only took a few seconds, but when he looked back up, the other pair had come much closer, and seemed to be waiting a polite few meters away. One of them, the one with pink hair, was also pointedly not looking in their direction.
[”Who the hell are these people?”] he thought. Emporio had finally looked up too, sparing a quick glance to the strangers but not lingering on them.
“Do you think they’re here for the other guy Mom’s next to…?”
“Probably. But we don’t have to leave if you don’t want to.”
“No, it’s fine. I’m ready.”
Emporio hesitantly held out his free hand and Anasui took it as he stood up. Their car was in the direction of the strangers, but he made sure he was between them and Emporio as they walked past, aiming a pointed glare at the women with pink hair. Prison habits, y’know?
Normally something as casual as that would either go unnoticed or simply met with an equal disgust. But apparently this would not be a normal encounter.
The pink-haired woman looked near-catatonic with terror. It was enough to make Anasui stop in his tracks, his glare quickly slipping into an expression of utter confusion. But it was in that very second that her gaze became diamond-sharp, and Anasui felt a weird sort of resonance in his ears.
Once, they’d asked Weather about the weird “bloodline radar” thing that he shared with both that damn priest, and Jolyne. He’d gotten quiet, and described it similar to a deep tinnitus. And shit—that was a pretty good damn descriptor for exactly what Anasui was feeling now. He didn’t really think about it, he just acted.
{Diver Drive!}
{Spice Girl!}
The elbow strike from Diver Drive was blocked by the pink of arm of a different stand. Shit. Shit. Shit.
He could feel Emporio huddled behind his legs
“Smettila!”
Why was her stand’s cry in Italian? What the hell? Who–
The pink stand—Spice Girl?held out her palms in a kind of surrender. Diver Down did not copy the gesture, instead its and Anasui’s hands curled into fists. The pink stand disappeared and the stand wielder held her position a few steps away from him.
“Non c’é bisogno! Mi dispiace–I mean, I’m sorry.”
He let Diver Down phase under his skin, armor in case she tried any more stand bullshit.
“Who the fuck are you?”
The second woman with the braids responded, ”Chi sei, stronzo?”
He flipped his hair and stepped further in front of Emporio, “I don’t speak Italian.”
“I think she called you an asshole.”
“Go wait in the car Emporio,” they used Diver Down to phase the keys through their body and to Emporio.
The kid took off like a rocket, and Anasui kept their gaze fully focused on the two Italian women, equally focused on him.
“I asked you a question.”
“It’s Trish. Trish Una. Now put your fucking stand away and have a conversation with me.”
“Or else what? I don’t–”Una. That was his mother’s maiden name—and his aunt’s. They…They remember a “Zia Donna” from years and years ago. Diver Down phases away as Anasui wracks his memory. Briefly, he considers the idea that this recollection might in in of itself be a stand attack, but he recalls a wedding.
For a moment, they just stand there, gaping at her.
“Your hair– It went fully pink?”
“Yeah. Gift from my dad,” She admits bitterly.
He thinks of his own pink hair, and how badly she reacted earlier.
“So. You’re in Florida?”
“Well. I heard you had died so I was going to…”
They wave to their gravemarker, “Yeah. That one’s empty. And a shitty tombstone, I’m getting a better one later.”
“So was that kid your son?”
“As good as.”
He doesn’t know how to do this, he realizes. They don’t really know what to do with this brand-new old cousin that just appeared from the ether of Italy. From the look on her face, she doesn’t really know what to do with them, either.
“Do you need a ride somewhere?” He asks.
She nods, slowly.
“I wouldn’t mind that.”